Accepted guess Not a possible answer B tier for first-turn info

RIVEN

RIVEN is accepted as a guess but is not on the solver's possible-answer list.

As an opener, it rules out about 93.4% of possible answers.

Meaning and pronunciation

Pronunciation: /ˈɹɪvən/

Verb

past participle of rive

Adjective

Torn apart.

Adjective

Broken into pieces; split asunder.

Source: Wiktionary contributors · CC BY-SA 4.0. Corrections.

Wordle status

A word can be a playable guess without being a possible answer.

Playable guess

Yes

Included in the Wordle guess list used by our tools.

Possible answer

No

The solver does not currently treat this as a possible answer.

Past Wordle answer

Not used yet

No past answer date found.

The possible-answer list is the solver's current list and may change when Wordle adds new answers.

How RIVEN performs as a guess

Wordle accepts RIVEN as a guess, but the solver does not list it as a possible answer.

Played as an opener, it lands at least one colored tile in 83.4% of games, misses completely in 16.6%, and leaves about 157 possible answers on average.

In the previous complete opener benchmark, it ranks #5,448 of 14,855 openers, averaging 3.68 guesses in games solved within six turns.

Try your feedback pattern

Tap the tiles to match your feedback, then see the ranked follow-up guesses.

All gray? Tap a tile to cycle gray → yellow → green.

First-turn measures

All four describe RIVEN used as an opening guess. Entropy is the same idea as “avg ruled out” on a log scale: a higher number means the guess splits the possible answers into more, smaller groups.

4.85 Entropy (bits)
157 Avg remaining
0.0% Exact match
93.4% Avg ruled out
Higher first-turn entropy than about 75% of evaluated openers
1.10 bits below the highest measured first-turn entropy (~5.95 bits)

As an opening guess: previous benchmark

How RIVEN performed in the previous complete opener benchmark, against its captured answer snapshot. These research figures are separate from today's solver recommendations. See the data page for the method.

3.68 Avg guesses
99.96% Solved within six
0.72 Spread of game lengths
#5,448 Rank among openers
Opening with RIVEN left 1 of the snapshot's answers unsolved after six guesses. A spread of 0.72 means those games clustered within about 0.72 of a guess of the 3.68 average. It ranks #5,448 of 14,855 openers by average guesses in games solved within six.
1 guess
0
2 guesses
73
3 guesses
877
4 guesses
1,159
5 guesses
225
6 guesses
19
Top-ranked in the current bounded policy screen: SLANT. The policy minimizes misses within six first, then average guesses among wins (3.46 for the leader). Compare the ranking measures

Composition

5/5 unique
2 vowels
Common:
EINR

Feedback chances

Any hit (G/Y)
83%
Green tile
28%
All gray
17%

Feedback distribution

RIVEN can come back 111 different ways. These are the most likely, and how many of the possible answers give each one:

394 answers
279 answers
217 answers
132 answers
130 answers
121 answers
106 answers
69 answers
62 answers
62 answers
61 answers
61 answers
58 answers
29 answers
27 answers
26 answers
25 answers
24 answers
23 answers
23 answers
23 answers
21 answers
20 answers
19 answers
17 answers
17 answers
16 answers
15 answers
13 answers
13 answers

Letter-value totals

Base letter-value totals for RIVEN; these do not show whether either game accepts the word.

Scrabble

R1I1V4E1N1
Total: 8 points

Words With Friends

Total: 10 points

Scores shown are base values without double/triple letter or word bonuses.

Strategy after playing RIVEN

What the solver recommends next for each way the board can respond to RIVEN.

Quick reference

Largest feedback groups after playing RIVEN:

17% chance
Suggested:
SAULT
12% chance
Suggested:
SLATE
9% chance
Suggested:
COAST

Follow-ups for common patterns

Ranked follow-up guesses for the 10 most common feedback patterns.

16.6%
SAULT 5.90 bits
11.8%
SLATE 5.89 bits
9.1%
COAST 5.54 bits
5.6%
TRACE 4.92 bits
5.5%
COAST 5.13 bits
5.1%
SAULT 5.16 bits
4.5%
COAST 3.71 bits
2.9%
SALTY 4.16 bits
2.6%
BETEL 4.35 bits
2.6%
SAULT 4.33 bits

Research on RIVEN

Game-tree analysis and word research for RIVEN, with an explanation for each figure.

Optimal play

Opening with RIVEN, a proven-optimal strategy averages 3.70 guesses and ranks #4,570 of 14,855 legal openers. The best proven opener, TARSE, averages 3.55.

No guaranteed hard-mode solve In hard mode, no strategy that opens with RIVEN can guarantee a solve within six guesses.

Our six-turn simulation says 3.68, at or below the proven-optimal 3.70, because the two figures score different answer lists.

These figures come from exhaustive game-tree search and are exact for the NYT lists of July 2023 (3,158 answers). They do not use the site's working answer pool.

How it sounds

Two syllables, stress on the first syllable Say it RIHVUHN.

Rhymes with GIVEN

Related meanings

In WordNet's sense inventory, RIVEN is a kind of tear or part.

Synonyms pull SPLIT rip

Familiarity and learning

Frequency
RIVEN sits in the advanced band of the wordfreq scale, appearing less than once per million words of written English; the band marks it as an uncommon word many players still recognize.

In a sentence

The society is riven with class conflict.
© tatoeba.org contributor shekitten (CC BY 2.0 FR)
The nation was riven by partisan conflict.
© tatoeba.org contributor sundown (CC BY 2.0 FR)

Sources: Optimal-play values: Alex Selby's exhaustive Wordle analysis (MIT); Pronunciation: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary (BSD); Word relations: Open English WordNet, 2025 edition (CC BY 4.0); Word frequency: wordfreq (data CC BY-SA 4.0).